OAK HILLS >> After hurrying out restaurant customers with their food in boxes, shutting off appliances and ushering out employees, Michelle Keeney started to pack belongings to evacuate in the wake of the approaching Blue Cut fire.

Less than two hours later, Keeney lost both her job, as general manager of the Summit Inn, and her house, a two-bedroom cottage behind the restaurant at the top of the Cajon Pass.

“I’m in shock,” said Keeney, a 24-year employee of the Summit Inn.

The longtime owner of the restaurant, Cecil Stevens, 84, of Apple Valley, said a lot of memories were lost.

“All those memories gone. My wife was up crying all night,” Stevens said. He owned the restaurant for 50 years.

But new owners Katherine Juarez and her brother Otto Recinos, who recently purchased the restaurant, want to bring it back.

“We plan to rebuild it just as it was,” Juarez said Wednesday.

The sale of the property was completed July 1 and Juarez said she and her brother will rebuild.

On Wednesday, the day after the fire ignited and scorched the eatery and the Cajon Pass, customers also were remembering the onetime hangout for celebrities.

“It was such a landmark. All that beautiful memorabilia,” said Barbara Calkins, 69, of Riverside, who remembers going there as a child and was a regular as an adult.

The iconic restaurant stop on Route 66 was known for ostrich egg omelets, ostrich burgers and buffalo steaks, as well as traditional fare.

Over the years celebrities were among the highway travelers to eat at the Summit Inn, including John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Pierce Brosnan, Clint Eastwood, Pearl Bailey, George Strait and Roy Rogers, according to Stevens and Keeney.

The Summit Inn survived many close calls with fires and other mishaps.

In March 2013 a drunk driver smashed into the kitchen of the restaurant. It was closed for four months until repairs were complete, Stevens said.

With one mountain investment destroyed in the Blue Cut fire, Juarez and Recinos have two more at risk as the blaze advances.

In January, the family bought a house in Wrightwood and in February, they bought the red cottage-style Grand Pine Cabins in Wrightwood, which were built in 1965.

The funds for these purchases came from the sale of family real estate holdings in Los Angeles, Juarez said in a telephone interview from her mother’s house in L.A.

In addition to trying to glean whatever information is possible about their Wrightwood home and the cabins, Juarez said she and her brother are notifying already booked cabin guests that their future visit won’t be possible.